Did God Allow Noah To Eat Meat?

The passage of Genesis 9:2-4 was the subject of great debate and controversy. After years of study and research and virtually leaving no stone unturned on the subject, to date I have not read a commentary on the passage which is worthy of a serious consideration. Generally it is argued that here we have the first biblical passage where God explicitly told Noah that he may kill any animal he wanted to in order to eat its flesh. Even vegetarians who abhor meat eating and who practice vegetarianism on ethical grounds admit that here we are faced with a biblical text which clearly sanctions the killing of animals and eating of their flesh. All they can say is that due to the fallen and corrupt nature of humanity God gave a “concession” concerning meat diet but it was not His ideal as in Genesis 1:30 where God ideally prescribed a completely vegetarian diet. But nothing can be further from the truth.

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Did Jesus Eat Fish?

There is only one passage in the whole of the New Testament where it is explicitly and specifically said that Jesus actually ate meat. If this text is true and genuine and in fact inspired by the Holy Spirit, then it would follow that Jesus was not and could not have been a vegetarian. But if on the other hand it can be satisfactorily demonstrated that this passage in Luke 24 is actually a forgery, then it follows that Jesus must have been a vegetarian, since a lying hand felt a need to insert a lying passage in order to portray Jesus as a carnivorous being.

Our bodies are made of trillions of cells. These cells are constantly being rebuilt. To do so your body needs food – that is, building material. Your body made of cells is alive and it needs live food in order to rebuild and maintain itself in excellent condition. If you eat inorganic food – that is, dead food– your body will be sick and dying. Harvey and Marilyn Diamond in their book Fit for Life give us this vital information:

“As an absolute prerequisite of life, water is right up there with food and air. From the moment you are born until you leave this planet, your body instinctively craves food, air, and water for your survival. You know what happens to a plant when it is deprived of water. It wilts and dies. The same will happen to your body if it were deprived of water. Its importance is clear. What do I mean when I say high-water content food? Consider that we are living on a planet that is over 70 percent water. If you were on the moon looking down on earth, you would see that 71 percent of the surface of our planet is water. The other 29 percent is land.Everythingisamicrocosmofa macrocosm. If you go deeper into the planet and look into the animals of the class Mammalia, you will find out that our bodies are 70 percent water, at least! When I first heard that, I found it very hard to believe. I couldn’t see any, nor could I even hear it in movement. But 70 percent of the human body is indeed made up of water. Now let me ask you a commonsense question. [And this is what the Natural Hygiene is about. It’s making use of your inborn sense of what is right]. If the planet earth is 70 percent water, and depends upon that amount of water for its survival, and your body is 70 percent water does it not make sense that for you to maintain a body that is always in its best condition, you must consume a diet that is at least 70 percent water? If your body is 70 percent water, then where will it get that water if you don’t replenish it on a regular basis?

From the moment you are born until the last breath you take your body is craving this essential of life. You must have water for survival. I am not talking about drinking water. Some people might be saying right now, “Hey, that’s great, I drink my eight glasses of water a day”. But in no way will drinking water bring you the success I am referring to. When I say high-water-content food, I am talking about two foods grown on this planet that naturally have a very high water content. Only two foods meet that requirement. They are fruit and vegetables. Anything else you eat is a concentrated food. Concentrated means that the water content has been removed, either by processing or cooking...There are two extremely important reasons why we need this water, and they’re the same two reasons why drinking water will not fill the bill: nourishment and cleansing of the organism. Water transports the nutrients in food to all the body’s cells and in turn removes toxic wastes.

All the nutritional requirements that the human body has – all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, amino acids, enzymes, carbohydrates, and fatty acids that exist, that the human body needs to survive – are to be found in fruits and vegetables. The nutritional requirements are carried by the water in those fruits and vegetables into your intestines, where all nutrition is absorbed. If you are eating foods high in water content, that means you are eating foods that have all of the requirements of the human body. Some of you might be saying, “Well, I take vitamin-mineral supplements”. That’s not what we’re talking about. The vitamins and minerals that I am talking about, that are useable by the human body, are to be found in abundance in orchards and gardens, not in drugstores. Besides carrying the nutrients into the body, this water performs the essential function of cleansing the body of wastes. For our purposes, cleansing and detoxifying are the same...It’s interesting that we eat in such a way as to not cleanse but pollute our bodies. We eat in such a way as to clog them. We don’t want to be clogged up any further, because the more we clog ourselves, the more we are going to put on weight, and the more difficult it will be to get that weight off.

In fact, from now on when you look at the foods that you are about to eat, do just that – look at the plate of food that you’re going to put into your body, and simply ask yourself this question: “Is this food that I’m going to put into this magnificent, intelligent body of mine going to cleanse me, or is it going to clog me?” Stated another way: “Is this meal predominated by fruits and vegetables?” This is a very important question to ask yourself regularly. It’s very simple. Am I eating a food right now that’s going to cleanse me [detoxify me], or is it going to clog me?...The reason we eat so much food that is clogging rather than cleansing is that we’re prisoners. Prisoners! That’s right. We’re prisoners of our taste buds. We will do anything for our taste buds. If there is a food that can’t outrun us, and it’s not nailed down, and it will fit into our mouths, and it tastes good, we’ll eat it! We don’t think twice about it. The only requirement we have about food is “How does it taste?” But what about the rest of the body? When you look at the tiny area of the body that your taste buds occupy, and then you look at the rest of your body [which is what has to deal with the foods that pass over your taste buds] you have to wonder why people place so much attention on one small part of the body and ignore such a large part.

How many times have you heard someone say, “You know what, I woke up this morning, I was real late, I didn’t have a chance to take a bite before I went out of the house. I ran out of the house to the office. I had more work than I could possibly take care of, I never took a coffee break. I never took a lunch break. I worked straight all day long.” You’ve probably heard that part before. But now five o’clock rolls around; it’s time to go home. All of a sudden this person realizes how hungry he really is. He’s rubbing his stomach and saying, “Man, am I hungry. I haven’t eaten all day. I’m going out right now to get myself something that’s going to wash out my intestines and cleanse my colon.” No way! That is not what you’ve heard. It’s more like “I’m going to get myself a pizza or a cheese burger.” The thing that people do when they’re hungry, most of the time, is decide what is going to taste best and then go and eat that food. If you think exclusively what is going to taste good, your body never has the opportunity to cleanse or detoxify itself. Therefore, you’re always eating foods that taste good, and then clog up the body, adding more weight, making the problem more difficult, and preventing you from ever taking that weight off...This can all be reduced to one simple sentence: if you want to be vibrantly and vigorously alive, in the best possible shape, you have to eat food that's alive.

You don’t have to be a Ph. D. or a mental giant to get that. A live body will be built from live food! Food that’s alive will be high-water-content food. If it does not have high water content, then that food is not alive. And if 70 percent or more of your diet is made up of food that is dead, processed, and denatured, I leave it to you to imagine what will become of your body. Fruits and vegetables are enormously high in water. Other foods are concentrated, meaning the water has been either cooked or processed out. Something I like to do is compare us, as a species, to the other mammals that are sharing the planet with us. Look at all the mammals. I am not talking about animals that we have as pets or in zoos, because they’re under the dominion of humans and therefore have many of the problems of humans. But have you ever seen a fat tiger or impala in the wild? Have you ever seen animals in nature that have lost their teeth and use false teeth to eat, or have hearing aids to hear, or have glasses so they can see, or are wearing toupees because they went bald, or have pacemakers to make their hearts pump, or dialysis machines for their kidneys?

Have you ever heard of a million animals a year dying of heart disease? Or a half a million dying of cancer? Or a quarter million dying of strokes? Or thousands dying of diabetes? No! In part this is because animals in the wild survive only by eating well and staying fit. Otherwise the process of survival of the fittest would kill them off. But for the most part, animals in nature are magnificently healthy in comparison to the health that we humans experience. And they are not overweight! Now, why is that? All we have to do to understand this is look at the foods we are eating and look at the foods that the other mammals are eating. Other mammals, the ones living in nature, are eating live foods very high in water content. They’re not eating foods that have had the water cooked or processed out. That is why they are experiencing a state of physical health much superior to ours. Even animals that are exclusively carnivorous, who eat nothing but meat, are eating high-water-content food. If you have ever had the opportunity, either in person or on film, to see a lion take down a zebra or wildebeest, you will have noticed that invariably the lion will rip open the underside of its prey, open its belly up, and go straight in and eat the intestines. I know that doesn’t sound like a day at the beach, but that’s how it is in the jungle! Why is it that when the lion takes down the zebra, it goes straight for the intestines? Because, by and large, carnivorous animals don’t eat other carnivorous animals. Think about it: Lions don’t eat tigers. Bears don’t eat wolves. Carnivorous animals are eating animals that are plant and fruit eaters, because that is what all animals need. They have to have the food from the plant kingdom. Either an animal will take its food directly from the plant kingdom, or it will eat animals that are eating that food. The reason a lion will go straight for the intestines is that there it finds the pre-digested high-water-content food. Then it will lap up the blood, because blood is over 90 percent water! In other words, it goes from the inside to the outside. What is left at last is the muscle meat” [pages 28-33].

Do you know what takes place in the body of an animal when slaughtered? Are you aware of all diseases the flesh diet causes? Dr. Jethro Kloss writes in his book: Back to Eden: The Classic Guide to Herbal Medicine, Natural Foods, and Home Remedies the following:

“Meats of all kinds are unnatural food. Flesh, fowl, and seafoods are very likely to contain numbers of bacteria that infect the intestines, causing colitis and many other diseases. They always cause putrefaction. Research has shown beyond all doubt that a meat diet may produce cancer in some cases. I have treated patients who have suffered from severe headaches for many years. Every remedy had been tried without relief, but when meat was excluded from the diet they obtained most gratifying results. Excessive uric acid is caused by eating too much meat and may result in rheumatism, Bright’s disease, kidney stones, gout, and gallstones. A diet of potatoes is an excellent way to rid the system of excessive uric acid. Increased uric acid excretion in the urine comes from the following two sources:

1. Uric acid taken into the body in meat, meat extracts, tea, coffee, etc. A pound of steak contains about 14 grams of uric acid. This accounts for the stimulant effect of eating a steak, since uric acid is a close chemical relative to caffeine.

2. Uric acid formed in the body from nitrogenous foods.

It is an established fact that meat protein causes putrefaction twice as quickly as vegetable protein. There is no ingredient in meat [except vitamin B12] that cannot be procured in products of the vegetable kingdom. Meat is an expensive second hand food material and will not make healthy, pure blood or form good tissues. The nutritive value of meat broths is practically nothing. They always contain uric acid and other poisons. The argument that flesh must be eaten in order to supply the body with sufficient protein is unreasonable. Protein is found in abundance in beans, peas, lentils, nuts of all kinds, and soybeans...The meat we eat is composed mainly of part of a muscle from an animal, among with varying amounts of fat and other tissues such as nerves and blood vessels, as well as many toxic substances that we cannot see.

At the time of slaughter, all the vital processes that were taking place in the animal came to an abrupt halt, and the toxins that were in the tissues at the moment of death remained there. Some of these products are urea, uric acid, creatinine, creatine, phenolic acid, adrenalin, possibly various bacteria and parasites, either alive or dead, various hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and other elements the animal had been exposed to or eaten while still alive...Dr. Wynder of the American Health Federation stated: “It is our current estimate that some 50 percent of all female cancers in the Western world, and about one third of all male cancers, are related to nutritional factors.”

As the consumption of animal fat and protein increases, the incidence of breast cancer increases in females and the incidence of colon cancer increases in both sexes. Women who eat large amounts of meat have a tenfold greater chance of developing breast cancer than those who eat little animal fat. A one pound charcoal-broiled steak, well done, contains 4 to 5 micrograms of benzopyrene, an amount equal to what a person would get from smoking about 300 cigarettes. During broiling, fat from the meat drips onto the charcoal, producing benzopyrene that distils back onto the meat. Benzopyrene is one of the main cancer-producing agents found in tobacco smoke [Pages 597-599].

Collier’s Encyclopedia, Vol. 21 on p. 704, gives us the following information:

“Hogs are subject to many diseases and parasites...The most common parasite is the intestinal round worm, Ascaris. Swine are also infected with the parasitic roundworm, Trichinella spiralis. The larvae of this roundworm become encysted in the flesh of infected hogs and are transmitted to humans who eat insufficiently cooked flesh. The larvae cause the infection known as trichinosis”.

In Vol. 22 on p. 468, we are told concerning Trichina the following:

“TRICHINA, a parasitic roundworm, Trichinella spiralis, in the class Nematoda of the phylum Aschelminthes [or Nemathelminths]. It is the cause of human trichinosis, a widespread disease in various parts of the world. It is estimated that about 20,000,000 persons are infected in the United States. The infection is contracted by eating raw or improperly cooked pork or pork products, which contain encysted larvae, the immature worms. The cysts are digested in the stomach releasing the larvae, which migrate to the intestine, attaching themselves to the intestinal wall. In five to seven days they become sexually mature and mate.

The viviparous female then burrows into the intestinal wall to discharge her larvae. A female may deposit about 15,000 larvae in five to seven weeks; after this she dies. The larvae migrate into the lymphatic system and small veins and are distributed to various parts of the body, eventually reaching the striated muscles in which they encyst. The greatest invasion is into the muscles of the diaphragm, tongue, chest, shoulders, and thighs. After several months, the body of the host, that is, the infected person, deposits calcium around the encysted larvae. Lesions result from the mechanical and toxic irritations produced by the larvae during the invasion, migration, and encystation. They often invade the heart muscles, causing myocarditis; in the diaphragm they interfere with respiration. There is no effective treatment”.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris points out that USDA does not inspect pork for trichinosis. The procedure would be far too costly and time-consuming, requiring that each cut of meat be put under a microscope for detailed examination. He explicitly states:

“About 4 percent of Americans have trichinella worms in their muscles and mistake their trichinosis flare-ups for mild causes of flu” [Sacred Cow, page 120].

Dick Gregory gives us this information:

“When the second hand source of protein comes from the slaughterhouse, the problem of poisons in the animal’s body is greatly intensified. An animal experiences a moment of terror when it knows it is about to be killed, and there is a reaction inside its body which shoots poisons instantly throughout the entire system. Adrenaline pours into the blood and muscles of the animal. Human beings have the same reaction in moments of anger, excitement and fear...Immediately after the killing, every cell and tissue in the animal’s body begins to disintegrate. Between the time of bodily [somatic death] and the actual death of the cells and tissues, activity is still going on. Animal tissues continue to consume soluble food material in contact with the cells and tissues, while also continuing to produce the waste substances which would ordinarily [during life] be removed to the lungs, kidneys etc.

If the animal were still alive, these poisons would be bathed by a pure stream of blood. When the heart ceases to beat, the cleansing process stops and the poisons which are still forming accumulate at a very rapid rate. The arteries continue to contract after death until all the blood they contain is forced on into the tissues and then into the veins. Thus, the flesh of a dead animal contains nothing but poisonous blood and venomous juices! Now doesn’t it seem reasonable that it is better to eat life than death? The firsthand protein of live, fresh, raw fruits and vegetables and nuts rather than the second hand protein of dead, rapidly decaying flesh?” [Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cooking with Mother Nature, pp. 66-67].

The people generally think that we must eat meat if we want to be strong. This is the “myth” of the West. Take a look at animals in their natural habitat. The strongest creature is elephant. From where does elephant gets his strength? Not from meat! Elephant eats fruit, leaves and young branches. Take a look at the gorilla and his tremendous strength. Gorilla is very much like a human being. Female gorilla menstruates every 28 days just like a woman. She is not subject to “heat” season like most other animals. She can copulate at any time – just like a woman. Her gestation period is nine months – like woman’s. Gorilla’s strength is amazing – yet gorilla is basically fruitarian. Gorilla eats no flesh whatsoever. Take a look at the beasts of burden. Horse, ox, mule, donkey, camel - all possess enormous strength. Yet they are all vegetarian. They do not eat any type of flesh. Hippopotamus and rhinoceros are also powerful animals - yet purely vegetarian. You do not need meat to stay healthy and strong. In fact, meat will only make you sick and weaker.

Vegetarian and vegan athletes endure much greater strains on the body than meat eaters. This is well documented fact. Most people simply do not care just what they eat. Christians think that Jesus has given them license to eat whatsoever they wish. But they are all so wrong. Eating wrong things causes great health problems. There are those who are fully aware of all the health risks and diseases they are exposed to by consuming foods that they ought not to. But they just can’t deprive themselves of these “delicacies”. Just like alcoholics cannot quit their bottle, the smokers their cigarettes - even though they daily read the warnings on their packets, the tea and coffee drinkers their caffeine - so also those who crave for flesh cannot abstain from it regardless of the risks and sickness involved. I however, firmly believe that God most definitely did not make a mistake when He prescribed strictly vegetarian and fruitarian diet to Adam and his descendants.

We cannot speak of meat eating without pointing out the fact that those who eat meat are alsoresponsible fordeath of millions of people around the world. Millions of children die from malnutrition and starvation simply because we take their food in order to fatten our animals so that we can eat meat. Please carefully read the following facts:

“One concern of ecologists is that the world’s food supply will not be able to keep up with the rapid increase in population, which amounts to about 208,000 persons a day. We have recently been made keenly aware of how close millions live to starvation every day, by the recent worldwide publicity given to the severe famine in Ethiopia, and other North African countries, where untold thousands have died from starvation...It has been estimated that in 1974 there was about one acre of agricultural land for every person. This is far more than enough to provide an adequate food supply for a vegetarian, who requires only about one-fourth of an acre. Those who depend on animal protein for food, however, require about 3 acres of land per person.

This is a very significant difference; about twelve times more land is needed to feed a meat-eater than a vegetarian...Another way to look at it is this. If a man chooses to use his acre of land to feed cattle, he would be able to produce enough meat to supply his protein requirements for 77 days; if he used his acre to produce milk, his protein requirement could be met for 236 days; for 877 days if he grew wheat; and for 2,224 days if he used his acre to grow soybeans. This comparison is emphasized even further when you realize that 21 pounds of protein must be fed to cattle in order to get one pound of protein in return. This difference between the amount of protein fed to cattle and the amount returned comes to 48 million tons, enough to meet 90 percentof the world’s protein deficiency if it were fed to them as cereal” [The Classic Guide to Herbal Medicine, Natural Foods, and Home Remedies, pp. 600-601, Dr. Jethro Kloss].

In order for an animal to produce 50 kg of protein it must consume over 790 kg of plant protein. In the United States alone 157 million metric tons of cereal, legumes, and vegetable protein suitable for human use is fed to livestock to produce 28 million metric tons of animal protein which humans consume annually.

Rifkin points out the following:

“Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new agricultural phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before. Ironically, the transition from forage to feed has taken place with little debate, despite the fact that it has had a more pronounced impact on the politics of land use and food distribution than any other single factor in modern times. In the United States alone, the figures are shocking. Food economist Frances Moore Lappe notes that 145 million tons of grain and soybeans were fed to livestock in 1979 – cattle, poultry, and hogs. Of that feed only 21 million tons were available to human beings after the energy conversion, in the form of meat, poultry and eggs. The rest, about 124 million tons of grain and soybeans, became inaccessible to human consumption. Lappe calculated that if the 124 million tons of wasted grain and soy were converted to cash it would be worth approximately $20 billion and if converted to human use could provide the equivalent of one cup of grain for every single human being on earth every day for a year” [Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef - The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, page 161].

Just think about it. In the United States alone 78 percent of all crops are fed to animals which are bred for slaughterhouses. All this food is wasted so that those who cannot control their lusts and tasty buds can eat meat. Those who waste these valuable crops do not stop for a moment to think about all those humans who have nothing to eat. They obviously do not care for all those children who die a slow and agonising death simply because they have no food to eat. They just care for themselves and their bellies. But when Jesus returns then the wolf and the lamb shall truly dwell together and the lion shall eat straw like an ox. Jesus promised us heavenly manna and the fruits from the Tree of Life and not veal, stake or Mc Donalds – which depends on the butcher's knife.